


antithesis

by screechfox



Series: jonathan sims, the distortion [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Basically just some Spiral Bullshit, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Gen, No Dialogue, Season/Series 03, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 03:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: Michael doesn't become Helen. Michael becomesJon.





	antithesis

**Author's Note:**

> i guess after my first tma fic was relatively tame, i had to make up for it by doing terrible things to jon. sorry dude.

The door handle won’t turn.

First, there’s relief. Then cold fear surges through Jon’s veins, a burst of adrenaline that leaves him shakier than he already was. Has this just been a trick to get his hopes up before abandoning him to Nikola’s plastic clutches?

(It says something about him that the prospect of going mad in nonsensical corridors then dying is enough to get his hopes up. He doesn’t let himself dwell on it.)

No, Jon realises, with one look at Michael. Whatever is happening, it isn’t because of Michael.

If Michael has ever had any sort of expression on that approximation of a face, Jon has only seen it in various shades of malicious amusement. Now, something is wrong. There’s a worried twist to the pink slash of Michael’s mouth.

It reaches out with those long, impossible fingers. It clutches the door handle, and turns it. The door refuses to open.

Michael tries again, and again. Jon can pinpoint the moment when a realisation crosses its face; for a single second, Michael looks all too human, and all too scared.

Then it lets out a scream that splits into a thousand fractal tones. Each one gets higher and higher and higher, until Jon can feel blood trickling from his ears.

He expects to see one of the circus things bursting in to investigate the screaming, but nothing happens. When Jon raises his hand to wipe at the slow stream of blood, it comes away clean. There’s a sobering thought: maybe he’s gone mad in Michael’s corridors after all.

Jon watches Michael’s form distort even more than normal. It loses all pretense of sense and substance. Pain pulses through his head, but he can’t make himself look away. Michael’s eyes meet his, glimmering with fear and bitter hatred.

Between one blink and the next, Michael is gone. It was never there.

Jon has just enough time to get annoyed at his loss of options, and then he doubles over as something _twists_ inside of him.

No, that’s not right.

Something twists _through_ him. It shifts through every inch of his flesh, bending and warping his body and mind but never letting him break apart. Pain isn’t the right word for it, but it’s the closest one he has.

Jon clutches his head with fingers that don’t bend in the right places. The nauseating sensation of being _changed_ increases tenfold with every moment. Vertigo makes the world spin around him. He presses his eyes shut, and spirals burst under his eyelids. They dance in every colour that isn’t, and it is _dizzying._

He thinks he’s screaming. A high and inhuman sound winds its way from his throat, even as his neck buckles between too-sharp fingertips. He can’t even tell for certain if he’s breathing.

Forcing his eyes open, Jon looks at the waxworks in a desperate struggle to center himself on _something._ As soon as his gaze lands on them, each figure begins to melt into new shapes; optical illusions and impossible geometries, all made of wax and madness. They aren’t the Stranger’s territory anymore. He has the horrible sense that they might be _his._

It’s getting harder and harder to think in straight lines. Every thought he has twists and writhes in his grasp until it is nonsensical. His own mind is becoming alien to itself. Yet there’s a strange feeling, like he’s on the edge of understanding something that can never be understood.

Jon makes a choice. He reaches for that understanding with both — all — hands.

_Your who torn bloody from your what,_ he realises. _Oh._

The Archivist is bleeding into the Distortion is bleeding into Jonathan Sims, a fractal at bitter war with its own nature. He is being broken apart into shattered remnants of identity, sharp as the edges of an infinite mirror where he cannot see his own reflection.

He has no words for the feeling that spirals through his body. His anatomy has no rhyme or reason, and he’s not sure it can ever make sense again. There’s a rush of exhilaration intertwined with disorientation, and neither emotion fits neatly into his head.

Everything seems to stretch on for an eternity of eternities, each longer and more terrifying than the last.

Then, as soon as it started, there is only Jon.

A door creaks open. It is not the same door as before. He enters, and shuts it behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> there will be more in this AU! fingers crossed i haven't just jinxed myself by saying that
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at [screechfoxes](https://screechfoxes.tumblr.com/).


End file.
